


The Grass Was Covered in Flowers

by sakuracorr



Category: Glee
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-28
Updated: 2013-09-28
Packaged: 2017-12-27 19:47:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/982902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sakuracorr/pseuds/sakuracorr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For her the future was over, for him it hadn't begun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Grass Was Covered in Flowers

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a bit back and thought I would finally get around to posting it, so it probably has nothing past season two canon wise.

            It started on a Thursday. It was one of those things Rachel would remember and Jesse wouldn't notice. Jesse mostly didn't notice the date, but the date was everything to Rachel. The first number in a timer, but more than that, the one she had picked. A Thursday. It didn't start or end the week. It wasn't the middle. Tuesdays still held the tiredness of Monday, but Thursdays, Thursdays were nothing special.

            Maybe she'd given it too much thought when she picked it out. It had been a singular focus for her, a project that she'd let herself become obsessed with because she needed something to drive her forward. She needed something to block out the airplanes that had still flown overhead, the news stories of the returning soldiers, and her own empty home like a ghost of the life she used to live before everything changed.

            This world hasn't changed. She steps into it, California, 2010. It's autumn, still warm enough to be outside, late enough in the year that everything is dying. A perfect date if ever there was one.

            She has changed though. As she walks down streets, a path she'd traced with marker on a map but now had memorized, she glimpses herself in store windows, the shiny outsides of cars, and she's not young anymore. Old enough to be not young, not yet old enough to be old. Some kind of transitional period that never suited her. Maybe this is all for the best. Her dreams are fading now. She'd mostly fulfilled them, not as much as she'd hoped, but enough she feels like she'd done something with her life. A few plays, nothing major. No one would remember her name, but she lived a life many, many other people got turned away from. In Broadway, even a mediocre career was special. That was the way it was.

            There are lines on her face now, or more the promise of lines that haven't quite come in yet. Her hair is still long; she'd always had boring hair. She doesn't wear dresses, though she brought a couple for this trip, and her shoes are mostly flat. It was the same for most people. She'd read once that the roaring twenties had been a reaction to war, and maybe the younger people had started parties and celebrations, but Rachel's generation had remained too sober for that. Women her age who wore heels, it said something about them, about how they wanted to pretend they were still young, how they wanted to forget what had happened to them.

            She'd worn heels the day he came home. Maybe then she'd wanted to pretend about things too, about the way things were. Jesse hadn't let her pretend for long.

            Rachel had thought about dressing up for this Jesse, but he was young, and she didn't feel as confident about bare arms and her figure and so she'd worn the sweater that was slightly too loose, something she'd settle into a chair in on Sunday to watch television in. A raspberry sweater which had shed a lot of the cashmere fibers so that it looked as used as it was. Rachel wasn't going to pretend for this Jesse. She came as she was, worn herself, bare arms long since covered and flat shoes that felt as sober as she felt.

            Here, the sunshine feels bright and promising. The air feels more open, fresher. The airplanes flying overhead are commercial. Life has forgotten to be too tragic. Wars are fought in other places, left to be thought about only by the people going and the people who had loved ones going. She'd thought her life was so tragic back then, tragic in a way that high school made things seem, but if she could go back to it, she would. She'd live there forever. She'd forget there was a future.

            It's Thursday in the afternoon, too late for lunch and too early for dinner. Rachel opens the door anyways, feeling her heart beat fast now that she's here. It might have been a bad idea. She reaches into her pocket and fingers the photograph. No, of all the things that lied to her, time didn't lie. This is where she was meant to be.

            It's a Thai place, casual enough there is no hostess. People seat themselves. She does that in a booth in the back, playing with the menu, trying not to feel too nervous. It's not how she wants to come off. She's too old to act like a lovestruck teenager about to meet her crush. The thought makes her throat tight. It makes her eyes sting. It's not time to think about those things, so she doesn't. This is California, 2010, and everything that's going to happen is far away, and she'll never have to go back to it.

            She hears his voice laughing from the back, then he comes through the door from the kitchen, white button up shirt, black pants. She wonders if he was flirting with someone. She'd never seen Jesse in his own element, not in his high school days. Not soon after that either. Not until long after they'd both grown into different people, had looked at each other differently, or had he looked at her the same? Had that been why she’d trusted him to keep doing it? Because Jesse was the steadfast one. She'd always been too overzealous to be reliable in matters of the heart, but he'd been so steadfast.

            Now she wants to cry again, but she has to nail this first impression, that's one thing she's sure of. Jesse is about to say something when he gets to her table, then he stops. After a moment, he shakes his head. “You look a lot like someone I know,” he says, laughs softly. “What can I get you to drink?”

            Something stronger than they serve here. Rachel had planned out what she was going to say, but it all leaves her, like she's a child running after pigeons, but they have all taken to the sky. “Who do I remind you of?”

            There's something that passes over his face. Embarrassment? Guilt? “It was no one. A girl I used to know.”

            A girl he used to know. He was someone she used to know too.

            She chickens out. “Just a water.”

            “Okay, just a water.” He jots it down. She wonders if his handwriting is as messy as it was. Messier, even. Rachel watches him disappear again into the back. How was this ever going to work? How was she ever going to say, “Hi, I'm from the future. I love you”? Yet that was the sum of it.

            She'd stuffed bills into her pockets while packing, whatever cash she could find laying around, but they'd changed it. Made it even harder to copy. The years were all wrong. Now she has what she could buy, an old twenty, didn't cost much, but it was two years older than she needed to be, so she didn't have to worry about it messing anything up.

            If she spends it, will it end up back in her hands someday? The thought's too overwhelming for Rachel to think about.

            Jesse comes back with her glass of water. He looks at her hard for a moment. “You really look like her, but... not as young.”

            That's a nice way of saying old. “Did you like her?”

            He smiles then. “More than I wanted to.”

            Rachel looks down at the table. “So what do you recommend here?”

            “The spring rolls are pretty good, but I guess that's not a meal.”

            “Sit down a minute while I decide.”

            Jesse looks back towards the kitchen before he slips into the opposite booth. They are the only two people in the main part of the restaurant.

            “Do you miss performing?” she asks.

            It takes him back, but he recovers quickly. “I look like that much of a performer?”

            “You always had something about you,” Rachel says. He's more suspicious of her now. Probably thinks she has early onset dementia. Would that she had gotten that during the war, so she could spend the rest of her days in some care facility, stuck in the past.

            “Do I know you?” he asks.

            Rachel leans over, and this time it's her turn to smile. “Want to hear a secret?”

            Jesse's intrigued enough to lean forward too. “Tell me.”

            “I'm from the future.”

            He laughs, a strong laugh that seems to come out of nowhere. It diminishes in strength before he's staring hard at her again. “Okay, sell me on it.”

            Only Jesse. He doesn't believe her, but only Jesse would play along anyways.

            “You were here for UCLA. Didn't work out, because you didn't go to class. Was it really that hard to figure out, Jesse? I mean, people go to class on TV.”

            He looks offended. “I don't watch much TV.” Then he takes in what she said. “Sounds like a stalker to me.” He ponders it for a moment. “I’ve always wanted a stalker. It means something, you know, your first stalker. One of those steps you have to take to become famous. So what was it about me?” He leans over further. “It was Nationals last year, wasn't it? I really nailed that song.”

            All Rachel can remember is how he broke her heart that year. It's not her fondest memory. “I'm not a stalker, and are you still proud of that?”

            “Why wouldn't I be proud of it?” Jesse asks, but he is uncomfortable enough she knows she hit a nerve.

            “Because we both know you could have done it without smashing the egg on my head.”

            He sits back then. “This is getting too weird.”

            “It's weird for me too.”

            “From the future?” he asks.

            “2034,” she says. “That really makes me feel old.”

            “Tell me something that happens next. What's going to be in tomorrow's paper?”

            “I don't know. If you were in the future, would you really research every day of the past?”

            “If I wanted to convince someone, then it seems like a good enough idea.”

            She sighs. “I don't know what's in the papers tomorrow.” Rachel fishes the photograph out of her pocket. “Here.”

            He takes it. “What's this?”

            “The future. Well the near future, but it's what I have.”

            Jesse is about the same age in that picture as he is now. She's still the same age she is now. Yet those ages hold in them years of difference, ground she's covered that he hasn't yet, things she knows that he doesn't know. He flips it over to see the date on the back. “Okay, I buy it.”

            She's surprised. “That easily?”

            “Well, I can either believe you, or I can believe you're crazy enough to pull off some elaborate scheme with Photoshop and elaborate research, and either way I'm flattered.”

            He's flattered.

            “Isn't this the part where you tell me something only Rachel Berry knows anyways?” Jesse asks.

            “I'm still glad I didn't sleep with you in high school.”

            It's not what he wants to hear, she can tell from his face. “But you're here for me, so it must have happened sometime.”

            Of all the things he could want to know about the future, that's what he comes up with. “Now I'm really glad I didn't sleep with you in high school.”

            “Wait, you're not going to warn me I'm about to die, are you?” he asked. “You're not here because I'm dead.”

            “You're alive.” There's that tightness in her throat again. “You just had a baby last week.”

            He considers that. “Not with you?”

            Rachel shakes her head. “We were going to once. It didn't work out.”

            “Isn't there some rule where you're not supposed to tell me this?” he asks. “Won't it change the future?”

            “You won't remember.” Rachel slides the photograph back, looks at the marks where it's been creased or crumpled. “It's how it seems to work.”

            Jesse leans back again. “It's a lot to take in.”

            “Take your time.”

            “How long you around for?”

            “Three days.”

            “Then you go back?”

            Rachel hesitates. “Yes.”

            “I'm still flattered.” Silence hovers above the air in-between them. A couple comes in the door. Jesse slides out of the booth. “I need to get back to work. You want to eat anything?”

            “I'll try the spring rolls,” she says.

            “You aged just like I thought you would, or how I'd imagine it if I thought about it.”

            Rachel doesn't know what to make of that, and he's gone after anyways. Is Jesse even going to notice she's gone? She hopes he doesn't. She hopes he keeps going on with that new life of his.

            She swirls her straw in her glass of water. He'd told her, “Really, if you think about it, you're better off without me, Rachel.” Either way it had been a decision she hadn't gotten to make. Part of her, a small, vindictive part of her, wishes she could tell him it wasn't true.

            She can hear Jesse making small talk with the other people. He glances at her as he moves to the kitchen. If she could change the future, if the rules were different and the past was fluid, what is there to change? It had to do with governments. It had to do with him and her and governments and maybe if she'd gone with him. Maybe if she hadn't stayed home for that baby she'd never have. Maybe if she hadn't been too lonely after that to answer the letters or the emails, just that one somber note that had taken her days to write.

            That was her future though. Her future which became her past, all of it immutable and solid enough to make it feel like destiny. Something she's trapped with because she was only a detour for him. Maybe a scenic detour. She knows he won't forget her, but not in the way where she'll ever be part of his life again. She's his past, the ghost of a life he’d left behind, and Rachel doesn't blame him. Not after everything he'd been through. She can't even drum up enough anger to hate him a little.

            Jesse appears with the spring rolls, studies her face for what has to be the tenth time. “So you forgive me for the Nationals thing?”

            She laughs, because it's so trivial to her now, but it looks so important to him. “What do you think, Jesse?”

            He grins before he takes the drinks he's also carrying over to the other table.

            Rachel tries the spring rolls. They aren't bad. She didn't ask if they had meat, but he'd always been good about remembering that for her.

            When she's paying for her order, he says, “Come back at seven. I'll be off then.”

            She slides him over the twenty, lets him keep the tip, and Jesse gives no thought to how she was able to pay.

            That leaves her to wander around nearby shops. Her dads are both still alive somewhere. She won't be visiting her dad in the care home, sick about how grateful she is that he's lost touch with reality, even if it hurts her that he can't remember her.

            In the end, she wasn't lost to anyone when she left. They'd all lost her first, left her somewhere else where she couldn't follow any of them.

They'd wanted volunteers for the new device, time travel, but at what a cost. She'd been the only healthy person under fifty there, standing amongst people who didn't have much time left, and Rachel had held onto her suitcase and felt okay about her choice. It had lifted a weight from her.

            That suitcase is stored under a large bush that happened to be close to where she woke up. It had been a patch of ground covered in dandelions, the sound of nearby cars passing her to the left, and a large bush that was low enough to hide the suitcase under.

            She takes the time to get it, the trip long enough that it's almost time for Jesse to be off of work by the time she gets back. Her feet hurt. She goes back inside to order a plum wine ice cream. Jesse grins when he sees her, though he's busy with all of the people getting late dinners.

            When she admits she forgot she couldn't pay, he tells her he'll get it, and it's sweet. Rachel doesn't know why she finds it so endearing.

            They walk out of the restaurant together. Jesse seems rather unperturbed by the whole situation. She'd still be questioning him, but he seems lost in his head. “You came back for me though?”

            Rachel nods. “I came back for you.”

            “It's still really flattering.”

\---

            He lives in a student apartment still, a small place that has a bedroom and a small kitchen. “I didn't clean up. Kind of hard to expect someone to drop in from the future.”

            Rachel supposes it was meant to be a joke, but his tone is too serious for her to know for sure. He's brought home some chicken patay that he washes down with a Red Bull. She notices his fridge is rather empty before she takes a stroll around his apartment. It's easy to see he hasn't been there long. The furnishings are basic, the walls blank, like anyone could be living there.

            “There must be a lot of cool things in the future,” Jesse says.

            “More than you could believe.” Rachel turns towards him. “You have to use all of your senses for movies.”

            “Does that mean you smell the blood in horror movies?”

            “You get used to it. Or you don't go.”

            “You didn't go, did you?”

            She smiles. “Nope.” She finds herself thinking about that time she first knew him. She thinks about Shelby. It's been years since she'd seen her, and even then it had been on accident. Her mother, the first person to leave her behind.

            “What do you plan to do while you're here?” he asks.

            “I thought I'd try to seduce you.”

            He grins at her. “Done. What else?”

            “I didn't have an objective, Jesse. To see you again. To say goodbye properly this time.”

            The way he looks at her gets serious. “I hurt you in the future.”

            “It wasn't your fault.”

            “I'm sorry all the same. It's not all I ever managed to do, was it?”

            She shakes her head. She doesn't want to cry. “No. Not at all.”

            “Good.” Jesse leaves the rest of his dinner on the small table as he walks over to her. He reaches down and he takes her hand. “I didn't know what it was like to fall for someone until I met you.”

            It makes her feel better in some tiny but real way. Rachel leans forward to kiss him, eyes closed, savoring each little moment, the way his mouth feels, the way he smells. All the little things that make Jesse Jesse and not some other person.

            Jesse pulls away from her. “I need some alcohol before you do that seducing part.” It turns out he has a bottle of vodka in the fridge, and he pours it and a new Red Bull into two glasses. Rachel gets one. “Cheers,” he tells her before he drinks his.

            She drinks her too, hates the sweet and strong of it, but she needs it. It's one thing showing your body to someone two years older than you. It's another showing it to someone whose last encounter was probably a girl with a teen body, firm breasts, overly tight skin and muscles. “Maybe it should be a platonic thing,” she says. There she is, chickening out again.

            Jesse looks at her. “Not after that high school comment you made.”

            She laughs, and it makes her hiccup. They both put down their glasses, and Jesse kisses her this time. He's so eager about it. It cuts her like a knife. She can still remember him on top of her, their hips moving but their eyes not straying, and she misses that. She really misses that.

            This Jesse notices her tears. He stops long enough to brush them away with an index finger. She's enough of the person he loves to make it work. He's enough of the person she loves to do the same.

            They end up in the bedroom. She loses the protection of the oversized sweater, the jeans that covered her legs, and the only consolation she has is she's wearing decently attractive underclothes. Jesse is pushing his jeans to the floor, but he looks her over. Whatever he sees, it's enough to earn a small nod of approval.

            He's on top of her then, kissing her, going a little fast for her taste. His hands slide over her breasts as he kisses her throat. Rachel slides a hand down his back, feeling him pause when she gets to his ass. “What?” she asks.

            Jesse shakes his head. “I just didn't expect it.”

            His hand dips down into her underwear, stroking her in a way that reminds her that he doesn't know her body yet, that tells her exactly how much he eventually learned it.

            They do better once he's inside her. Jesse stops to look at her. “Wait, shouldn't we get a condom?”

            “It's not a problem. Not for me.”

            That's enough for Jesse. He works on thrusting into her again, awkward until they catch onto the way the other person is moving enough to coordinate it a little. Her face is buried in his throat, and she can feel his hot breath on top of her hair.

            Rachel lets herself pretend, a little, that she's still twenty-six, and they are doing the not quite smooth fumbling that comes with sleeping with someone for the first time. It had been at her place, her bed, too much wine and uncertainty for it to happen smoothly, but Jesse had worn the most navy blue shirt, one she can still remember sliding off his shoulders. He'd maneuvered her thighs with an air of authority, but he'd looked at her like he was going to find he was mistaken any minute.

            It had made her feel worth something, in that moment, to be that important to someone. She'd taken him home because she was depressed that night, depressed enough she didn't want to sleep alone. Even then she hadn't expected to fall in love with him.

            Jesse comes in the middle of this memory. Rachel strokes her fingers through his hair, not bothered she doesn't follow suit. She doesn't feel like she has it in her.

            It's his turn to have his nose buried against her skin. “I do something with my life, right? UCLA was just... a thing.”

            It sounds so cavalier a thing to say, but she knows somehow he's voicing it from a fear and uncertainty that he keeps hidden from himself most of the time. She knows because she's seen him do it before.

            “I think you're proud of everything you've done,” she tells him.

            He doesn't respond to that. She doesn't tell him it's a lie, because for the part he wanted to know about, that is the right answer.

            Rachel expects to sleep on her side of the bed, but he offers out his arm, and she settles against him. “You know I really loved you.”

            The past tense makes it feel like it's coming from a Jesse he won't be for a while. “Yeah, I do know that,” she says.

\---

            Sometime in the early morning they wake up enough to have sex again, as if Jesse is worried about fitting it in while he can. Rachel doesn't mind. Having him inside of her is warm and less lonely.

            This time she has a small orgasm, enough she's okay with being done by the time he pulls out. Jesse looks at her. “You're really giving me a hard time.”

            “What do you mean?” she asks.

            Jesse doesn't answer. Instead he flips onto his back. “Is it because I'm not him?”

            Rachel frowns, unsure of how to answer that. “It's because we knew each other better. It makes a difference.”

            “That makes married sex sound great.”

            “It was.”

            Jesse seems pleased about that. He reaches over, fingers skimming the top of her breast. He's concentrating really hard on some thought. This thumb brushes over her nipple. “To be honest, this feels more unreal than the time travel stuff.”

            Rachel laughs. “I think I know what you mean.”

            They get out of bed, Rachel wiping herself up in his bathroom, and he watches her clean her thigh with the toilet paper. “You're really sexy like that.”

            Rachel blushes a little. She hasn't felt sexy in so long that it's weird now. She moves to wash her hands, and Jesse takes the opportunity to use the restroom. “So is this what it's like to be married?” he asks when he's done. She looks over at him. “Doing stuff in the same bathroom?”

            “We did that before we were married, Jesse.”

            “Did I pick out a good ring?”

            Rachel moves out to the living room, unzipping a front pocket of the suitcase. She takes it back to the bathroom where the diamonds shine in the light. “It was perfect.”

            “I feel like I'm missing out on something that was really great,” he says.

            “It's all the future.”

            He considers that, takes the ring and slides it on her finger like a thought experiment. Rachel takes it back off. For a moment, they seem aware of everything separating them from each other.

            “If you don't mind looking like a cougar, there's somewhere I'd like to take you tonight,” Jesse says. “I think you'd like it.”

            “Okay.”

            “I have to work today, but I'm off tomorrow. Do you have anything to do while I'm at work?”

            Rachel shakes her head no.

            “Come with me. I don't think they'll care if I give you free drinks.”

            He keeps reminding her of how young he is. Rachel looks at him, and all she feels is glad to be with him. “Okay.”

            She takes a notebook he'd bought for school. There's doodles on a few pages, a few random song titles, like he was thinking of what he was going to sing next. It's after ten in the morning. Her first day with him is over.

            Jesse sits with her on break. He touches her thigh under the table, flirts with her enough anyone watching knows she's not his mother, though she's old enough to be. Rachel refuses to care about them. Give her three days, and they can judge her for eternity. She won't care then.

            After work, they sit on a bench in a patch of grass sharing some curried vegetables he got after his shift was over. Rachel leans her head on his shoulder, closes her eyes as a breeze washes over her. She hopes heaven is like this. She's not sure how it would work out, if he'd spend all of his time with the new Mrs. St. James, but maybe she can have part of him. Maybe he can split in two, and the part that loved her will be there, and she can rest her head on his shoulder.

            “You're sad again,” Jesse says. He isn't looking down at her.

            Rachel finds his hand, intertwines her fingers with his. “I'm happier than I've been in a long, long time.”

            Her words sit there until he goes back to forking vegetables, the occasional one ending up in her mouth. She's not that hungry. They told her she wouldn't be.

            The container gets tossed in a trash. “Let's go home and get changed,” he says.

            Rachel nods before she gets up with him. They stroll hand in hand like they hadn't since they were first married. After a while they seemed sure enough of each other not to need that immediate physical attachment.

            At his apartment, she brings her suitcase to the bed, and he watches her dress as he gets changed himself. Rachel tries not to feel self-conscious as she pulls on one of the dresses followed by the pair of shoes she'd stashed in the back of her closet. The last present he'd bought for her before he'd went to war. His hands had been on her calves, rubbing down to her ankles. “I know you won't wear them for long, but I saw them, and I wanted to give you something. You're so important to me, Rachel, I...” His voice had cracked then, and he'd rested his head against her lap.

            Her fingers are stopped on the clasp, and Rachel forces herself to finish putting them on. She has wet eyes and she hasn't done her hair, and he's watching her like he can't take his eyes away. Rachel moves past him to grab her brush from the suitcase. He moves her hair back from her shoulder when she finishes, holds her from behind. “You make me feel like I've known you forever.” His cheek is against her back. “Like we just fit together.”

            Rachel takes a deep breath. Her chest is so heavy she feels like her heart could just stop. She closes her eyes, not wanting to give up the feeling of him there, holding her, but like everything else, it has to pass, then it's gone, and she has to let it go.

            She wipes a tear from her cheek. “I think we're ready then.”

            He leads her to somewhere five blocks away, where the city is starting to turn into downtown. The place he takes her has piano strains filtering out into the patio. Inside it's dark, lighting leaving patches of light on an otherwise shadowy wall, stage near the front lit blue as a girl sings Nina Simone at the piano, accompanied by men standing to her right, farther from the stage end.

            People clap when she's finished. She starts on another song as a waitress leads Jesse and Rachel to a table. A few people glance at them, not all of them approving, but what Rachel notices is how Jesse is pulling her along by her hand. This time she orders a drink, a vodka and tonic, and Jesse gets the same. Rachel gives him a look, like she knows he's not legal yet, and he gives her a look that's rather smug back. What waitress is going to question him when he's here with a forty-something year old?

            Rachel listens to the new song. She thinks the chorus, _“don't let me be misunderstood”_ , is the name of it, vaguely remembers from the little Nina Simone she's heard.

            “What do you think?” Jesse asks her, breaking her out of her thoughts.

            “You're right. I kind of love it.”

            He's pleased with himself again, and Rachel lets him be. Their drinks come back, and they order some mushroom appetizer that's the only thing without meat. “You know I'd eat meat for you,” she said. Why not? These animals aren't coming back. Saving things is such a futile endeavor.

            “I feel like I'd give it up forever to be with you.”

            The waitress interrupts with two glasses of water to go with their drinks, and Rachel feels relief to not have to respond. She puts her drink down to clap for the end of the song.

            “It's too soon for you to say something like that,” she says. “It's too soon for you to be that in love with me.”

            “I wasn't until you came.” Jesse looks at her. “It was there, but not like this.”

            Rachel settles down. He'll forget, love her in that more than lukewarm way that will only torture him for a couple of years, and then he won't remember her until they see each other again in New York. At some point though, he'll be that in love with her. At some point he'll stop. Right now he's too young to know what any of it means yet. She's over forty, and she barely knows what it means.

            Rachel picks a salad. She's not hungry, and she doesn't want to spend too much of the money she knows he doesn't have. It's like her body has forgotten what it's like to function normally. She hasn't used the restroom since she's gotten here. Even a tomato slice feels like too much food.

            Jesse watches her. “You okay?”

            “Yeah.” She thinks of a lie. “Time travel makes you feel queasy.”

            He shrugs. She supposes it makes as much sense as the rest of it.

            This time when they get back to his apartment, he takes his time with the sex, his kisses lingering, his fingers hovering over her skin, and Rachel, who he's pushed back against the wall, feels all of it flood her body.

            This time she gets him onto his back, desire making her anxious to get what she wants from his body, riding him with a courage she had to learn. A courage he taught her. They both come hard, Rachel collapsing on top of her, and Jesse says a breathless, “That's more like it.”

            She laughs, can't help herself, and he joins her. His fingers tangle through her hair. They brush over her shoulder. “You're so beautiful.”

            She doesn't want to tell him it hurts when he says those things. Part of her wants to hear them one last time. Rachel lowers her ear to his chest and stays there listening to his heartbeat.

            There's only one more day. She wants to drink each moment in, soak it into the marrow of her bones, so that she has at least that much to take with her. There are all these lingering questions she hasn't been able to answer. What would their baby have looked like? Why didn't she love him in high school, because now she wanted to have had those extra years with him? Why was she not it for him when it had felt like that?

            “I don't want to break your heart,” Jesse says, He's looking at the ceiling. “I don't want to be responsible for you being like this.”

            In her heart Rachel knows that he's sorry, not just this one, but the one whose somewhere out there in time putting his baby to bed, going to sleep with his new wife curled against his side. Probably not enough to change it if he could, but probably enough he feels bad, sometimes, because she hadn't let him leave without the crying, the begging, the arms around his legs, telling him how he couldn't do this to her. Telling him how she couldn't live without him, and he'd dragged her up from the floor and looked at her seriously and said, “Rachel, we've been living without each other for fourteen months.”

            “I thought it would end,” she told him. “I didn't think I was going to be doing it forever.”

            He'd looked guilty then, but it hadn't stopped him. He wanted that new life more than he had wanted her. She was baggage from a life he didn't recognize. That's how he'd said it, not the baggage part, but the part about a life he didn't recognize anymore. A life he couldn't go back to. She would have changed for him, whatever he wanted, but he didn't want her.

            This Jesse and this Rachel, they still haven't fallen in love yet. There are so many moments that she can't regret, not exactly. The future is open for them, and it's only the end that's going to hurt. The rest of it was part of the best years of her life.

            “Jesse,” she says, looking up so she can see his face. She wants him to know she means this, means it as much as she can. “I love you, so I forgive you.”

            His hands come up to cup her face. His mouth moves so it's against hers. This time it seems to be his turn to take in the kiss, like he's trying to remember it, deep down in some part of his brain where he won't be able to lose it.

            They have sex again before they get up. She watches him in the kitchen as he gets a drink, tries to offer her some crackers which she refuses. Jesse eats them instead. “You said three days?”

            She nods.

            Jesse looks over at the kitchen wall. He's not used to feeling so grown up, she can tell. Rachel imagines the boy who will take her to prom, so excited about his scheme for the immediate future. He will forget her, and then he won't have to be mature yet. It will happen naturally, like it's supposed to, like it did for her so that she didn't even see it coming.

            He takes her hand, and they end up in a starting position for a dance, but there's no music and too little space. They look at each other. He lets her go to wrap his arms around her, holding her like he's afraid to let her go. “Can't you stay?”

            “Jesse, even if I could, I wouldn't. That life, you're too young for it, and I'm too old for it. I don't think I could do it all over again.”

            He doesn't let her go for another few minutes, and then he releases her slowly. They get back into bed, and she curls against him. Jesse might go to sleep with someone else, but this is always where she'll want to be, nestled against the warmth of his body, the feel of his bare skin against hers.

            “This is too sad to bear,” he tells her.

            Rachel moves so that she can rest her chin on his chest. “It's not going to last forever.” Things are so impermanent. So impermanent _she_ can't bear it, but nothing lasts forever. Even what she feels has an end.

            She has a dream about Jesse. He's taken her out to a field that was covered as far as the eye could see in purple flowers. He has her in his arms, and she can tell the difference between him and his younger self. “Isn't it beautiful, Rachel?” he asks her.

            She nods, because it is.

\---

            Jesse is subdued as they get ready for the next day. Rachel puts on her last dress, the one she's wearing in the picture, before she takes her suitcase and throws the whole thing in the dumpster downstairs.

            When she gets back, she sits down to put on her shoes. Jesse takes them from her. He puts his full attention on the task, and when he's done, he rests his head against her knee. She strokes his hair.

            Rachel makes him take the camera. He seems reluctant, but eventually he takes it from her. She knows Jesse is realizing that he's powerless against the forward march of time, that life is going to take him to places that he doesn't want to go right now. She rubs his arm. He'll want them once he gets there. If there was one thing about Jesse, it was that he made sure he got where he wanted to go once he'd decided where that was. It might have taken him awhile, he might not have chosen everything, but he had made choices. She had made choices. They had done the best they could.

            She takes his hand, because he needs that physical reassurance. For hours they walk aimlessly around the city. There are no words. He has a future, and she has a past. It's too big of a difference for them to have anything to say to each other.

            There's a small park. She sits on a swing, and he follows suit. They must look ridiculous, but there's no one around to see them. Even if they did, the memory of it would fade gradually out until time was satisfied it had righted herself. That's how Rachel thinks of time, like a sentient being, guarding over things without regard for anybody's feelings.

            They take the picture. It's more out of obligation, but Jesse musters up enough feeling to manage a smile. Rachel looks at the picture on the tiny camera screen. “What were you thinking about?”

            “That if I didn't look happy, you wouldn't decide to come back.”

            It's Rachel's turn to hold him. She does it for a long time too. “Enjoy the future, Jesse,” she whispers to him, rubbing his cheeks with her thumbs.

            He lets out a breath and nods. Jesse takes a hand from his cheek, holds it tightly. “I'm going to regret every time I ever hurt you.”

            “I don't want that kind of promise.”

            They head back home, stopping at a copy shop along the way. The photo is printed out, and Rachel hands it to Jesse before deleting it from the camera. It feels like a ritual. If she thinks about it hard enough, it's like someday they'll be here again, living these same moments over and over for the rest of eternity.

            She can feel it, a slowing down that has been creeping up on her all day, tangling through her limbs and chest until it feels harder to do things than it was. Somewhere she is out there, and she'll do it all again. Maybe she doesn't regret it as much as she thought she did. Maybe she'd been waiting to actually say goodbye, and now that it was mostly said, Rachel has finally released everything from her tight grip, has let it take to the air, and having let it go, it was time to rest.

            They spend most of the afternoon in bed, Jesse's arm around her back. She thinks he can tell she is wearing out. He doesn't ask though.

            Her stomach is starting to hurt. Rachel turns to him. She feels a little delirious. “You were the love of my life, and I never bothered to tell you what it meant to me, but it was so important, Jesse. So important...”

            He puts two fingers on her mouth, replacing them with a kiss that draws on forever, never deepening nor lightening. It's followed by a second shorter kiss.

            She puts her head back down. Rachel feels so comforted in his arms, relaxed and at more peace than she'd thought was possible. She hopes her father dies like this, buried in some memory of the person he'd loved most, happy and at peace.

            Someday Jesse will die, maybe the war will have left him by then. Maybe he'll have a few grown kids to stand by the side of his bed. She wants him to be loved. Loved like he had loved her. Even if it hadn't lasted, he had tried his best.

            Once Jesse is asleep, she moves out of his arms, careful not to wake him. Rachel looks back at him one last time from the doorway. All that possibility, all the what ifs that kept eating her, have withered now. All she sees is the man she loved, still so full of possibility.

            The air is getting colder. Rachel can feel it, like her body has no defense against it, but there's also an apathy about it. She's always accepted how this ended. It was better than lying in some hospital bed alone. She'd never had it in her to find somebody else.

            Before she'd left, she'd visited the grave she'd made for the baby she'd wanted so badly. It had been the early morning then, the dew had settled in, and the grass was covered in flowers. Rachel had laid down in them. She'd never told Jesse about that place. Rachel had meant to, but after he got back, it had seemed like it was her pain to bear, so she'd borne it.

            Something about that moment had made everything final. She'd known what it meant, but the acceptance had settled into her body. Somewhere out there had to be a world, some kind of world, where her dads would be with her again. Somewhere out there was her baby, and she had to believe in that place she'd have some part of Jesse. Enough to hold onto.

            Even if there wasn't, even if things ended as meaningless as they had sometimes felt in her life, Rachel knows this is what she'd wanted, a few more hours with him, whatever the cost she’d had to pay for it.

            She can feel the beat of her heart, a thump and then a too long pause before it repeats. The thump is fading. She can barely hold onto her thoughts now.

            Out by the bus stop, there's a bush. The grass is covered in dandelions. Rachel closes her eyes. By ten am there will be nothing left of her. Where she goes, she can't imagine.

            _Don't you know you're living the moments,_ she wants to tell the other Rachel. The one who is out there living somewhere. Who will go on to live the future Rachel already knows. She’s living the moments with her fathers. The moment with her friends. The moments with Jesse. The moments with Finn. _… the moments that matter more than you're ever going to realize?_

            Maybe it's enough to realize that now. It's like that play, _Our Town_ , and the final curtain is closing, everything is over. Everything has been realized. Life has come and gone. The audience is being wished a good night.

            And it's cold. And all she wants to do is go to sleep.


End file.
